Vegan Cipâte (traditional Quebec “Sea-Pie”)

Sea-pie (French: Cipâte) is a layered meat pie made with either meat or fish, and is known to have been served to British sailors during the 18th century. Here in Quebec it is a traditional dish, often served for Christmas. It contains no fish or other seafood, but moose, partridge, hare, beef, veal, pork or chicken. So much cruelty for one pie? We can do better, Joël thought and was excited to try and replace the many meaty textures by wonderful plant protein. So here’s a refurbished traditional Quebecois dish – bon appétit!

Ingredients

Meat substitutes

1 19 oz can of jackfruit in brine

50g dried shiitake mushrooms

255g soy protein cubes or tempeh (we used Gardein’s beefless tips)

4 tbsp soy sauce

4 tbsp olive oil

Vegetables

4 russet potatoes (peeled and cubed)

2 medium yellow onions (sliced)

3 tbsp olive oil

Spices

2 tsp salt

2 tsp dried oregano

2 tsp dried thyme

2 tsp nutritional yeast (optional)

1 tsp dried sage

½ tsp black pepper

¼ tsp ground cinnamon

Dough

1 cup flour

1/2 cup water

1/3 cup vegetable oil (of your choice)

*You will also need around 4 cups of vegan beef broth (recommended) or vegetable broth

Recipe

The first thing to do is to rehydrate the shiitake mushrooms! Start by bringing 3-4 cups of water to a boil, throw in all the dried mushrooms and let soak for 45 minutes.

Meanwhile, you can prepare the jackfruit. Open and drain the can and start removing all the rubber-like cores around the pieces of fruit. Then, you can use a knife to make the bigger chunks a bit smaller. Leave aside in a medium sized mixing bowl for now as we wait for the shiitake to be done.

For the spice mix, simply combine all the spices together into a small bowl and leave aside. Put the potatoes and onions into a mixing bowl and add the oil. Throw in half of the spice mix and stir until it is spread throughout all the vegetables.

Once the shiitake are rehydrated, drain them and gently squeeze out the excess of water out of them using a towel. Add them to the jackfruit bowl and throw in the soy protein or tempeh cubes as well (thawed if bought frozen). Add in the soy sauce, olive oil and the rest of the spices. Let both the vegetables and the meat substitutes sit for at least 30 minutes (the longer the better).

Preheat the oven to 400F and use that time to get your dough ready. Simply combine all the ingredients in a large bowl and mix until it forms a nice ball. Cut it in half and roll into 2 even-sized circles.

Now to assemble the dish, start by putting half of the meat substitutes at the bottom of a Dutch oven (or any oven-safe pot that is big enough), then add half of the vegetables and cover with dough. Slice a small hole in the middle of the dough and repeat the same steps with the rest of the ingredients.

Now take your broth and pour it through the hole you made in the middle of the dish. Keep slowly adding broth until it reaches right under the top layer of dough.

Bake at 400F for 50 minutes and then lower the heat to 250F and bake for 4 more hours.